The scar above her eyebrow had faded to a faint pale line you would have to know to look for.

And the reflexive apologies were gone; she no longer said I’m sorry when she reached for a second helping, and the first time I noticed their absence I had to go inside for a minute and compose myself.

I had sold the old house.

I could not have my mother live one more day inside walls that held those memories, no matter how good the property or how much the sale cost me.

She deserved a home without a single dark thing embedded in it, and now she had one — a small bright place by the sea, where the pantry had no lock on it and never would, where the refrigerator stood open to her at any hour of the day or night, where the only chart on any wall was one she had put up herself, of the tides.

She raised her glass of sparkling water toward me, and a warm, genuine, unguarded smile lit her whole face — the smile I had been afraid, that first terrible night, I might never see again.